Character Spacing in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Increase or decrease the font size of text in your slides, and you'll discover that not only does this make a difference in the aesthetics of your slide, but the text itself uses more or less space than you may want. Sometimes, you may want they text to take just a wee bit lesser space so that all content can fit within two lines rather than three. If you would like to alter the spacing between text characters, you can do so by using PowerPoint 2010's Character Spacing option, that affects the appearance and readability of both title and body text. Character Spacing is the amount of space in-between individual letters. You can easily adjust this spacing for a cleaner look or to make more or less text fit within any text object.

Let us now explore how you can choose different Character Spacing options for the selected text on your slide in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows:

1. Open any presentation and select the text you want to change the Character Spacing for, as shown in Figure 1.
2. 
   Figure 1: Text selected on the slide
2. Now, access the Home tab of the Ribbon and locate the Font group. Within this group, click the Character Spacing button, highlighted in red within Figure 2.
3. 
   Figure 2: Character Spacing button within the Font group
3. This brings up the Character Spacing drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 3.
4. 
   Figure 3: Character Spacing drop-down gallery
5. Within the Character Spacing drop-down gallery there are six options. Also, notice that within the Character Spacing drop-down gallery, a check mark is placed in front of the active option. The active option in Figure 3 is Normal. This indicates that the character spacing for the selected text is Normal. Also, as you hover your cursor over any of the first five options you'll see a Live Preview on the active slide for the selected text.
6. Figure 4, below shows immediate results of applying first five options of Character Spacing drop-down gallery to the selected text:

Very Tight

7. This will condense the Character Spacing for the selected text by 3 points.

Tight

8. This will condense the Character Spacing for the selected text by 1.5 points.

Normal

9. This keeps the Character Spacing normal.

Loose

10. This will expand the Character Spacing for the selected text by 3 points.

Very Loose

11. This will expand the Character Spacing for the selected text by 6 points.
12. 
    Figure 4: Text applied with various Character Spacing options

More Spacing

13. This option bring up the Font dialog box with the Character Spacing tab active, as shown in Figure 5. We already explored the Font tab in our Font Dialog Box in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial.
14. 
    Figure 5: Character Spacing tab within the Font dialog box
15. Within this dialog box you can adjust character spacing and kerning using custom settings. To set custom spacing, choose either Expanded or Condensed from the Spacing drop-down list, and then enter the number of points by which you want to expand or condense the Character Spacing. You can also adjust the Kerning between two letters, based upon their shapes. Kerning takes the shapes of the letters into account as it selectively tightens the spacing. Click OK when done.
Note: If you need to use the same Character Spacing in all slides in your presentation, then it is advisable to adjust the Character Spacing options within the individual Slide Layouts. You can edit Slide Layouts within the Slide Master view. The changes you make within the Slide Master view will affect all the slides in your presentation.
4. Save your presentation often.